Guests of Honor - Loscon 52
Writer Guest of Honor: Bill Wolkoff
Bill Wolkoff is an Emmy and Hugo nominated writer/producer in TV and film. The TV community knows him for his work on the acclaimed series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, for Paramount Plus. In addition to co-writing the first ever Star Trek musical episode, “Subspace Rhapsody,” he has written and produced pivotal episodes for all five seasons of the visually groundbreaking show. Before that, Bill developed and was a showrunner for the animated series Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, for Netflix. His other credits include The Man Who Fell To Earth (Showtime), Once Upon A Time (ABC), Star Wars Rebels (Disney XD), and Tron: Uprising (Disney XD). In addition to his TV work, he is also known for being an avid bike commuter and tie wearer. Bill went to his first con in Chicago when he was ten, where he wore a nineteen foot long Number Four scarf that his Nana spent a year knitting for him. Forty years later, he can still smell her cigarette smoke on it.
Artist Guest of Honor: Selena Phanara
I have been involved with fandom since the mid 1980’s and discovered the LASFS at LOSCON 8. My life has never been the same! In a very good way.
I was a resident art at the Life Arts Building in Riverside Ca and helped to start The Riverside Community Art Association. My first solo show was in that gallery. I did a few installations at various coffee shops and even created a book cover for a local writer.
I then moved to Burbank Ca in the early 1990’s and started my own business, Selina’s art cart, doing art parties and functions working with children. I was also working on my own ever evolving style.
Soon, I got involved with the club, in a very meaningful way.
I found enough confidence to start showing my work at conventions and people really seemed to enjoy my unique style and subject matter.
Everything my brain comes up seems to be from another planet so I fit right in.
People bought my work and I have been honored to have received many prize ribbons over the years. I painted my first mural on the Apa-L room at the clubhouse on Burbank Blvd clubhouse location.
When we moved out of that location the Eaton collection choose to include that door at the Eaton library as a part of fannish history. That was quite the honor!
In 2018, the Pasadena Museum of History presented the sci-fi-themed exhibit
Dreaming the Universe, which drew on the area’s rich history of astronomy and science fiction. Absolutely working with and including the LASFS, they requested the door for this exhibition as a stand alone piece of work. I was so grateful to be included with such greats of our fandom.
And now I am back! I live about 3 miles from the entrance to the Joshua Tree National park a place that had made it very difficult to go to LOSCON, although I did manage once or twice. I am delighted to be now showing at LOSCON two years running and this time as the artist GOH! It is my honor and a great privilege!
I am in quite a few fannish collections and have always felt welcomed here more than anywhere else in my artistic career.
Please enjoy the images that I’ve created for this convention. They are not paintings. The secret to experiencing my paper art is to look closer. I hope you will.
Music Guest of Honor: Griff the Filker
Griff grew up playing piano and singing in various choirs. Both his parents had Masters’ degrees in music. He was also in marching and concert bands in high school and college, and took up guitar in his early 50s in an act of rebellion against his classical-music upbringing.
He started taking guitar lessons with Blind Lemming Chiffon in 2023, who introduced him to the filk community by way of the Festival of the Living Rooms. In early 2024, Gabrielle Gold asked him to give a concert at OVFF 2024. Since then, he’s chosen the name Griff the Filker, started writing a bunch of songs, has given concerts at various cons, and has eight albums either released or planned (mostly planned). Why “the Filker”? Because there’s at least one other musician out there who goes by Griff, but he’s the only Griff who does filk.
He’s the Interfilk Guest at FKO for 2026. He’s given his workshop Creating While Neurodivergent at multiple cons, and hopes to keep doing so. He and his husband, author Cozy Joe Petty, are also both published fiction writers (together and separately), and are owned by an obstreperous tortoiseshell cat named Molly. At his day job, he teaches college students various things about college and social stuff.
Griff and Cozy Joe live in Long Beach, California.
Website: https://griffthefilker.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GrifftheFilker
Bandcamp: https://drgriff.bandcamp.com
Fan Guest of Honor: Chris Marble
Chris was raised in a reading household. His father started reading Astounding SF magazine in 1935 and his mother was a mystery reader.
The earliest SF novel Chris remembers reading was Mike Mars Flies the Dyna-Soar by Donald A. Wollheim. His first SF Convention was the 1981 Denver Worldcon. The first con he volunteered at was 1982’s Fantasy Faire, hosted by Bill Crawford. He’s been attending cons and staying involved ever since.
He worked exhibits at Worldcons for a decade, then started Dockmastering at LA 2006. He’s worked just about every area in his 45 years.
He’s also know for using liquid nitrogen to freeze ice cream in 42 seconds (or so). Started doing that in the late 1990s at Loscon.
He has been married since 1987 to Elizabeth (Lee) Marble. She was already a Star Wars fan before they met. She joins him at all the conventions, but has only had in a volunteer position a couple of times. She’s tough to see at a con because she’s using attending programming.
In his non-fannish life, Chris worked 15 years at General Dynamics and then 19 at Harvey Mudd College, his alma mater. At the former he wrote missile test software, at the latter he was Unix Systems Administrator. Been retired since 2010.
Science Guest of Honor: G. David Nordley
Gerald Nordley is an astronautical engineer, consultant and writer of science fiction and nonfiction. He majored in physics (Macalester 1969) and has an MS in systems management (USC, 1981). He is a U. S. Air Force veteran with experience in spacecraft operations, communications spacecraft engineering and procurement, air-ground battle management, and advanced propulsion research. He was an investor in two startup Aerospace firms, Tethers Unlimited and XCOR, and is treasurer of two nonprofit corporations, the Experimental Rocket Propulsion Society (ERPS) and CONTACT Cultures of the Imagination. He has served on the boards of both organizations and a term as board chairman of ERPS.
As a writer, he has a hundred plus publications of short fiction and nonfiction, including several peer-reviewed technical papers in astronautics, lately concentrating on interstellar propulsion by mass beams. In science fiction, his main interest is the exploration and settlement of space, focusing on the dramatic aspects of individual lives in a scientifically plausible spacefaring human future.
He is a past Hugo and Nebula nominee and four-time winner of Analog’s “AnLab” reader’s poll. His latest book is an updated collection, A World Beneath The Stars, Expanded from Brief Candle Press. His latest story, “Titan of Chaos” appears in Life Beyond Us (Laksa Media 2023) His two novels, The Black Hole Project and To Climb a Flat Mountain were published in parts in Analog and more recently as complete works by Brief Candle Press. He also has five single author collections of short fiction available from Brief Candle in print or ebook format, the latest being Around Alien Stars in 2019. His stories focus on the human experience in scientifically plausible futures, with many of them in astronomical settings.
Gerald is a Senior member of AIAA, a fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, a life member of the US Air Force Association, the Minnesota Space Frontier Society, the USC Alumni Association, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He was born in Minneapolis in 1947, raised in Golden Valley, Minnesota, and though he hasn’t lived there since college, still thinks of himself as a Minnesotan. He is an amateur astronomer, sang in a choir, and played several musical instruments–but not for audiences since high school! He will have been married to Gayle Wiesner, a retired Apple computer programmer for 50 years this May! Gerald and Gayle have three adult children and one grandchild. They live in Sunnyvale, CA. Gerald’s personal website is at http://www.gdnordley.com.